“No, indeed! I’d rather go home. I wish I had my knife, though. I wonder why he didn’t speak?”
“That’s what I don’t understand. I should have thought he would just said something, before we got out of hearing.”
“Like as not it wasn’t him, after all.”
“Like as not it wasn’t, Bobby. S’posing we go back.”
“I’m going home,” was Bobby’s reply. “I don’t believe it pays to steal water-melons, anyway.”
“’Twasn’t stealing, Bobby!—no such thing! Of course anybody’s a right to take a water-melon. Uncle Ben had no business to raise ’em, if folks had got to steal ’em before they could eat ’em!”
“That’s so,” groaned Bobby. “I shouldn’t have thought he’d have planted them.”
And so, groaning in spirit, Bobby went home. He had lost his knife, and everybody would know next day that he had been stealing water-melons. He couldn’t help thinking that the folks would call it stealing, after all.
What to do he didn’t know; but he must go home at all events. He was never out very late, and when he went in his mother asked him where he had been. He said he had been over to James Scott’s.
“I don’t like to have you over there so much, Bobby,” said his mother. “I am afraid James Scott is not a very good boy.”